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marco wrote:Hello Enrique,
today I have found a site (http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it) where there are a few interesting texts mentioning tarot (including a couple of beautiful letters by Pietro Aretino).
I was particularly amused by a Comedy by Giordano Bruno were Tarot is mentioned. I have attempted a translation on Tarotpedia. This made me think of our conversation about Tarot and Inns

Thanks for the link Marco, and your translation. In his second letter, does Aretino say something about leaving out the evil tower card as he cannot stand to see anyone get the card in their hand? (DLXXII below). Or am I completely misreading it? (erm... this probably should be in another thread)...

marco wrote:Hello Enrique,
today I have found a site (http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it) where there are a few interesting texts mentioning tarot (including a couple of beautiful letters by Pietro Aretino).
I was particularly amused by a Comedy by Giordano Bruno were Tarot is mentioned. I have attempted a translation on Tarotpedia. This made me think of our conversation about Tarot and Inns

Hi Marco,

That is great, thanks. Even in print it feels like theater.

Picking from our conversations, I fancy the notion of the tarot as a “sermon for the inns”.

Can someone tell me why does the game of tarot required so much memorizing?

Many Thanks!

EE

P.S: Marco, I have one suggestion about your translation: where it says “ “I am afraid that they are signed...” it would be more specific to say “...they are marked...”, as I imagine he is talking about cards marked to give its owner an advantage in the game.

"Surely the making of those [cards] is beautiful and full of skill: this has been dear to me, because it satisfied the ambassador of Urbino, to whom I gave [the cards] as a present, so that he can spend his time in this exercise [i.e. tarot] now that the illness, that wanted to take him away from us, has left him".

In this case "torre" stands for "togliere" (to take away).

EnriqueEnriquez wrote:That is great, thanks. Even in print it feels like theater.

Hello Enrique,
Bruno was a genius. I am sorry he was too proud to avoid being burned. As Pen recently observed, those were dangerous times.

EnriqueEnriquez wrote:Can someone tell me why does the game of tarot required so much memorizing?

From the little I know of the game, players must "follow suit", i.e. reply in the same suit as the first card played in each hand. So one should remember all the cards that have been played. In this way, you know how likely it is that someone will play a card in the same suit that, being higher than yours, wins the trick.
Here you can find a set of complete rules: http://www.pagat.com/tarot/frtarot.html

There is a passage in Lollio's invective (v. 175 etc) that briefly mentions this aspect. See tarotpedia.

EnriqueEnriquez wrote:
P.S: Marco, I have one suggestion about your translation: where it says “ “I am afraid that they are signed...” it would be more specific to say “...they are marked...”, as I imagine he is talking about cards marked to give its owner an advantage in the game.

I found it interesting that he had been hired to do readings at the Mitsubishi car dealership. It is my impression that this sort of thing would not happen in North America because of the perception of tarot as evil or Satanic--particularly at a car dealership where you might get people boycotting that particular brand of car because a tarot reader had been seen at a dealership.

It's a striking difference between European or British sensibility and what it's like over here.

Enrique, I didn't realize that you worked with names in such a manner. Admittedly, my head is under a rock of avoidance most days, but I found it fascinating.

Roni's description of how his mind enters the "Twilight Zone" reminds me very much of the artistic experience of the right side of the brain, or finding "flow" as it is sometimes spoken of. I felt it would be similar.

cadla wrote:Enrique, I didn't realize that you worked with names in such a manner. Admittedly, my head is under a rock of avoidance most days, but I found it fascinating.

It all started as a weird mix of me looking into the language of the birds, and getting acquainted with the English language. Specially through poetry. Even when I use ti make most of my living as a writer -in Spanish- language was invisible to me. I was too close to it. But facing a foreign language one starts seeing words as objects. Then, letters become objects too, or shapes, or weird noises.